DERREN Brown, the popular master of mind control and illusion, will be appearing at the Sunderland Empire as he takes his first live show in six years on tour of the UK

He will be at the Sunderland Empire from Tuesday September 7 to Saturday September 11, before his mammoth eight-month second leg of the tour from March to October next years.

The content of Showman remains a closely-guarded secret, but Derren has revealed: “The heart of the show is about remembering what’s important.

“Like how the very things that we find most isolating in life - our fears and difficulties - actually connect us. Framed with what I think will be some extraordinary demonstrations of my voodoo”.

He adds: “Strangely, the show pre-Covid was, at its heart, about how the tough things in life that we feel isolate us, tend in fact to bring us together, and be the very things that we share.

“And then lockdown happened, which was a strangely literal playing out of that theme. So although the benefit of extra time has allowed us to re-work the show a little and change some aspects of it, its heart has remained the same”.

Derren’s live shows have won him two prestigious Olivier Awards – for Something Wicked This Way Comes (2006) and Svengali (2012) and he has received more Olivier nominations and wins than any other one-man show in theatre history. He has played to sold-out houses across the country every year since 2003 to over 1.6m people. Previous shows, Infamous, (2013, 2014), Miracle (2015, 2016) and Underground (2017, 2018) have also enjoyed critically-acclaimed seasons in London’s West End.

In 2017 he made an award-winning US stage debut at the Atlantic Theater in New York with Derren Brown: Secret, which transferred to Broadway, enjoying a sell-out season at the Cort Theatre, New York until Jan 2020.

Derren Brown: Showman is presented by Michael Vine, Andrew O’Connor, Derren Brown and Paul Sandler for Vaudeville Productions Ltd.

It is directed by Andrew O’Connor & Andy Nyman and written by Andy Nyman, Andrew O’Connor & Derren Brown. General Manager is John Dalston and marketing is by Helen Snell Ltd

Tickets are available from the Ticket Centre on 0844 871 3022 or online at www.ATGtickets.com/Sunderland.